HOW TO LIVE LONGER AND LIVE BETTER WITH INTERMITTENT FASTING

Intermittent fasting - the forgotten code within our DNA

Written by Alexandra Bubela, RN and Health Writer for Consumer Health Digest
This Article is Copywritten for Mucusless-diet.com only.  All Rights Reserved

Present in all cultures and religions around the world fasting has been, over the years, an important and life-changing tool in combating a wide palette of autoimmune conditions, earning its rightful place as an improving symptom process in both immune and metabolic parameters.

Fasting: A Forgotten Routine of the Human Behavior

Looking back in history, and we are not discussing the modern one, we can see humans have always been lead by stories. The role of fasting in all the major world religions, like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism has been a deterministic one because offering the sacrifice of well-being to the respective divinity; you were promised a better life and a

sense of fulfillment. Even now, fasting is currently practiced all around the globe by the followers of these perspective religions and many others. [1]

Looking at it from a historical perspective of human biology and evolution, fasting has been a common induced practice for which our bodies have adapted. Seasonal changes, climate changes like droughts and heavy precipitation and also our migratory instinct had led humans to adapt to both luxurious, indulging dietary habits when the surrounding conditions allowed it, but also to periods of food-depriving situations. However, this perpetual cycle enabled them to adapt and adequately function no matter the case. [2]

Current times are, however, based on commercial misconceptions that providing a regular, 3-meal generates stability and improved health. On the contrary, it has been proven that food binging and deterministic patterns, coupled with a sedentary life, are capable of inducing metabolic disturbances, like endothelial dysfunction, visceral adiposity, and insulin resistance. [2] As we all know, these are the primary underlying conditions that lead to the mainstream health issues of modern society: autoimmune disorders, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.

Anti-Aging and Disease Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

By comparison, caloric restriction (CR) has been intensively studied; the results prove that it can mitigate disease and enhance longevity. “The cellular and molecular mechanisms responsible for the protective effects of CR have likely evolved billions of years earlier in prokaryotes attempting to survive in an environment largely or completely devoid of energy sources while avoiding age-dependent damage that could compromise fitness” [1, p.2]. The advantage is that this process is valid for all life forms, simple or complex.

There are four valid examples that have been studied who demonstrated the ability not only to resist but thrive in a caloric depriving environment:

• The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, set in a food depriving environment, increased its lifespan. [3, 4]
• The common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster increased its lifespan when exposed to food dilution. [5]
• Another example is the common brewer’s yeast, known as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which switched from a standard growth culture to plain water doubled its lifespan and also developed resistance to stress. [6, 7]
• The most known bacteria studied to asses caloric reduction is Escherichia coli, better known as E.coli, which, in a food-deprived environment, increased its lifespan four times. [8]

In Longo and Mattson study from 2014, they mention “Notably, when switched to food deprivation conditions, both bacteria and yeast enter a hypo metabolic mode that allows them to minimize the use of reserve carbon sources and can also accumulate high levels of the ketone body-like acetic acid, analogously to mammals” [1].

The benefits of fasting have been studied and demonstrated in several studies, regarding its type: periodic fasting (PF), time-restricted fasting (TRF), fasting mimicking diets (FMD) or intermittent fasting (IM); they have all shown improvement in different health parameters, providing aid in an array of chronic illnesses, diabetes, cerebrovascular disease, coronary heart disease, Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s and even cancer.

Fasting in Autoimmunity - Evidentiary Support

The most common precursor of all autoimmune disorders is known to be the pathologic paracellular intestinal permeability. When combined with bad dietary habits and a genetic predisposition, it generates the compromising of the gut barrier integrity, the prerequisite of autoimmune disease development.

Fasting is proven to reduce this, by lowering intestinal hyper-permeability, decreasing the ability of undigested food antigens, microbes and toxicants to cross the mucosal barrier. [9]

There is an abundance  of studies and clinical trials that have demonstrated the beneficial role of fasting:

• Four control studies have shown that significant long-term clinical benefits and disease symptomatology have improved by following a fasting period with a vegetarian diet. [10]
• Significant clinical improvement has been noticed in rheumatoid arthritis when the subjects were exposed to prolonged fasting, for seven to ten days. However, these benefits retracted when the period finished so exposure to several cycles might be recommended. [11]
• A clinical six-joint score in a study also demonstrated that disease activity reduced while fasting, in rheumatoid arthritis patients, grace to reduced intestinal permeability. [12]
• A crossover study involving mixed connective tissues disease, fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis patients exposed to fasting followed by a vegan diet demonstrated they were able to reduce classic treatment and experience fewer symptoms at follow-up controls. [13]

Fasting at Molecular Level – the Benefits

Fasting can trigger, mechanistically, the following, but not reduced to benefits:

• It helps synthesize glucocorticoids – the human's body natural replacement of externally administered steroids, which reduce inflammation.
• Attenuates oxidative stress.
• Increases parasympathetic tone, boosting stress resistance.
• Optimizes energy metabolism. [14]

Further on, the enhanced parasympathetic response leads to an improvement in brain-gut axis – main communication channel between the immune system and the central nervous system [15]. This enables positive results in:

• Reduced heart rate and blood pressure. [15]
• Better blood flow.
• Increased heart rate variability.
• Healthier gastric secretion response.
• Better intestinal motility.

Regarding the benefits of intermittent fasting in cellular growth and regeneration, several processes have been studied with positive results:

• Autophagy of amyloid beta plaques and tau proteins, as well as dead cells and organic debris.
• Stem cell-based regeneration.

As for brain -level improvements, fasting enhances:

• Synthesis of neurotrophic factors.
• Mitochondrial biogenesis.
• Executive function and cognition synaptic plasticity.
• Neurogenesis.
• Ameliorates inflammation. [1, 2]

Another aspect in which intermittent fasting has been proven to produces beneficial modifications was counteracting fatty cell development, by boosting the human body's response to AMPK (adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase), which further eliminates the risk to develop inflammatory conditions and cholesterol. [16]

A common trigger in multiple conditions as ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, Behcet's disease, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune hepatitis, type 1 diabetes, systemic lupus erythematosus, and rheumatoid arthritis is the high presence of a pro-inflammatory adipokine, leptin. [17, 18]

By enhancing the regulatory T-cells, which are normally depleted by leptin, fasting has the ability to counteract the symptoms in the conditions mentioned above, while improving different metabolic biomarkers, like:

• Adiponectin.
• Leptin.
• Lipids.
• Glucose.

And processes which promote metabolic corrections [1, 2]:

• Anabolic activity in muscle tissue.
• Adipose tissue lipolysis.
• Hepatic glycolysis.
• Insulin sensitivity.
• Ketone production.

Intermittent  Fasting Benefits for Circadian Rhythm Management, Sleep, and Detoxification

In 2015, Patterson and his colleagues stated in a study: “It is hypothesized that some fasting regimens and time-restricted feeding impose a diurnal rhythm in food intake, resulting in improved oscillations in circadian clock gene expression that reprogram molecular mechanisms of energy metabolism and body weight regulation” [19, p.7].

This can lead to improvements on cardiometabolic processes by synchronizing and leveraging the circadian rhythm biology.

As fasting enforces discipline, and provides, when rationally conducted, a more restricted meal schedule, it is able to alter the levels of xenin, ghrelin, leptin, the appetite-regulating hormones which lead to increased obesity risk. As Patterson puts it, “Eating meals at abnormal circadian times (i.e., late at night) is hypothesized to lead to circadian desynchronization and subsequent disruption of normal sleep patterns” [19, p.78], which normally leads to reducing the risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer, by simply improving sleep quality.
 
As sleep is the main responsible factor for regeneration at a cellular level, a normalized circadian rhythm enables an increase in the production of the enzymes responsible for the three main hepatic phases of detoxification. Allowing a functional, regular, circadian rhythm with the help of fasting will balance the production of these enzymes, reducing risk for an altered drug metabolism. [20]

To cut it short, intermittent fasting represents the optimized reduction in food consumption load, providing the body with the opportunity to create a hiatus from the intensive digestive processes that are enabled by a healthy diet. It also reduces the digestive's tract exposure to inflammatory contributing proteins, gathered from exposure to allergenic proteins or various immune-mediated food reactions; thus, fasting proves to be the viable option for a regimen for autoimmune wellness. [21, 22]

Intermittent Fasting as a Weight Loss Solution

Intermittent fasting has gained quite the audience during the past years, if not for all the reasons above, but for its weight loss benefits. [23]

The main reason behind this is that eating fewer meals; the calorie intake is automatically reduced. This leads to lower insulin levels and increased growth hormone levels, by boosting the release of norepinephrine (noradrenaline), the primary fat burning hormone. Consequentially, this increases your metabolic rate by 3.6-14%. [24, 25]

A 2014 review study found that intermittent fasting was responsible for a 3-8% weight loss and 4-7% waist circumference reduction, indicating an enormous loss of the harmful belly fat building up around your abdominal organs, linked to cholesterol build-up and diabetes pre-requisites. Also, muscle loss was found to be significantly reduced when intermittent fasting is used as a weight-loss method. [26]

Boosting the Effects of Intermittent Fasting

Even though it is the most promising weight loss method circulating around the web right now, it does not mean intermittent fasting is a fail-proof weight loss method.

Many of those who adopt it are unprepared in facing the nutritional challenges it brings. As Ian Clark, the founder of Activation Products remembers his weight loss journey, “I may have been overweight, but nutritionally, I was starving." This, honestly, has to be the most relatable experience for anyone struggling with losing weight.

However, this is one of the aspects that can be improved not only by doing your research regarding proper meal-plans and avoiding binging in your food intake periods but by also boosting your metabolism with one of the most popular superfoods known in history, black cumin.

Nigella Sativa, the Latin denomination for Black Cumin, has been known for millennia as an adjuvant in weight loss procedures, but also in providing all-around health benefits, also being known as "truly a cure for all disease except death," as Dr. Gary Null puts it.

Harvesting his own experience and having the ability to fund proper research, Activation released a black cumin seed oil, with the purpose to replicate the results in a double-blind study with revealed that women who took black cumin oil during their weight loss process, showed a 4-time increase in fat reduction than those in the placebo group. [27]

At the same time, a plethora of health benefits has been discovered in partnering intermittent fasting with black cumin oil, from increased anti-oxidative responses to metabolic disturbances in central obese male, with positive testosterone improvement. [28]

Intermittent Fasting vs. Obesity and Overall Health Benefits

The 20th century has brought an abundance of myths and implemented false beliefs regarding wealth. However, most of them have been in a constant fight with the biological processes that enable our bodies to function properly and give all of us a sense of health and wellbeing.

Luckily, there are those cited in this piece that have taken the time, effort and money in studying alternative, but forgotten over the decades, even though present not only in our cultural roots but through the power of DNA –editing by generation repetitive-habits, also in our genetics.